Quote of the day 6th March 2017

"What was striking about this election was the extent to which voters were saying the same thing over and over again." ... "It was about Jeremy Corbyn, it was about the nuclear industry and it was about our inability to deliver for them because we had decided we wanted to be unelectable.

It should be said that voters weren’t always this polite: Corbyn was referred to in all sorts of colourful language – even by lifetime Labour voters. “That idiot in charge of the Labour party” was at the milder end of what I encountered. Even many of those who promised to vote Labour were often quick to qualify their support with a statement about their dissatisfaction with the party leader.

I know that the extent to which voters mentioned Corbyn’s name was partly due to the effectiveness of the Conservative campaign in getting their message across about his long-held opposition to nuclear new build. But if our opponent’s primary campaign tool is our own party leader, then we have some hard thinking to do as a party."

(Labour activist Rachel Burgin, from her article about the Copeland by-election  "A conversation with a Copeland voter.")

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